Kluwe/Kluweh/Kluwih is a Javanese dish made from young chestnut. It is made in a Santen! This means it uses Kunir/ Turmeric/ Hardi (so many names for 1 spice! Haha) and coconut milk to create a delicious sauce. The fruits must still be so young that the crusts around the seeds are still very soft (white) and therefore edible.
Unfortunately, one of the fruits I had was not that young anymore, the crusts were already brown and hard. No worries! Just peel it while eating.
Kluwih ( Artocarpus camansi ) is the name of a kind of perennial tree whose fruit has tough and prickly skin. The fruit is similar to breadfruit, but it has more prominent prickly seeds and skin. The local name in Sundanese is kulur or arise.
Artocarpus camansi, the breadnut, is a species of medium-sized tree in the family Moraceae. It is native to New Guinea, the Maluku Islands, and the Philippines. It is a wild ancestor of the breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis). Sometimes it is also known as “the seeded breadfruit”. Just to distinguish it from its mostly seedless descendants. Breadnut fruits are edible when cooked. The large seeds can also be roasted on an open fire, peeled, and then eaten.
A little history
The species was first described in Flora de Filipinas. Según el sistema sexual de Linneo (1837) by the Spanish friar and botanist Francisco Manuel Blanco from specimens in the Philippines. This specific name is derived from Tagalog kamansi (Philippine Spanish: camansi). It is a local name for the tree in the islands.
Other common names for the plant include: chataigne, castaña ‘tropical’ (French and Spanish for the unrelated but culinarily similar chestnut), kastanje in Suriname, kapiak in New Guinea, katahar in Guyana, kluwih in Indonesia, sukun biji in Malaysia, kos-del (කොස්දෙල් ) in Sri Lanka, pan de fruta in Dominican Republic (Spanish for its relative breadfruit), labapin in Haïti, and pana de pepita in Puerto Rico.
The recipe
Vegan Kluwe Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 large onion chopped
- 5 cloves of garlic finely chopped
- 5 cm laos sliced
- 4 salam leaves
- 4 kaffir lime leaves optional
- 2 tablespoons of cooking oil for cooking
- Edible oil to lubricate hands knife, and cutting board (see step 1)
- 2 teaspoons of salt
- 2 teaspoons of kunir powder
- 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper
- 2 blocks of tempeh cut into cubes of 1 by 1 cm
- 2 Young chestnuts
- 1 large tin of soft-boiled black eyed peas drained weight 480g
- 400 ml coconut milk
- 2 liters of water approximately
Instructions
- Cut the fruit in half lengthwise twice, remove the ‘midrib’ and the skins. The pulp consisting of seeds and fiber is used in the dish. You can crumble this by hand or cut it into pieces (approximately 2 by 2 cm). Note that there is tar (white and sticky) on the fruit. To prevent it from sticking, you can rub your hands, the knife, and the cutting board well with some cooking oil beforehand.
- Heat a pan (preferably with a thick bottom). Add cooking oil. Then add onions, garlic, galangal, salam, and kaffir lime and fry for 3 minutes.
- Add the tempeh to the pan, toss from time to time until it is slightly yellowish-brown.
- Add the herbs (kunir, black pepper, and salt) as well as the chestnut. Turn it all over. Pour some water into the pot approximately one centimeter below the contents of the pot. Cover the pot and simmer for 20 minutes on medium heat. Check every now and then and shake if necessary.
- Check whether the fibers and seeds have softened. Add the black-eyed peas and coconut milk and toss. Let it simmer for another 10 minutes without a lid on the pot so that it can evaporate a bit. Check the taste and finish if necessary.
Video
Notes
Serve it with Madame Jeanette pepper flakes and moringa powder on top!
